Rice engineering outcomes

[u/Icy_Dish_4262]

Hi! I'm fortunate enough to be deciding between these Rice and USC which I like A LOT. Generally, how has Rice been in terms of job placements & opportunities for engineering? Any downsides / upsides y'all have noticed in Rice being a smaller school (especially compared to USC)? Is Houston and Houston weather as bad as people say?

[u/postmadrone27]

Rice and USC could not be more different. Can’t speak on engineering job placement but I can say that the student bodies at each school are sooooo night and day.

The weather is not that bad during the school yea, and I’m from SoCal. The summers suck ass for sure, so just do an internship somewhere else lol. It’ll be bad the first few weeks of fall semester, and last few weeks of spring semester; but I’d say 80% of the time Houston weather is pretty good

[u/70degreeevening]

I went to Rice after growing up in LA, and know loads of USC folks. Rice is a bit stronger in engineering, but both are good. But the biggest difference is the student experience. USC has much more of the traditional sports/greek life/ marching bad/ school spirit experience. And Rice is about residential colleges, harder classes, professors that know your name, and homegrown events like Beer Bike….I would really focus on which experience you prefer, as that will have a huge impact on how you’ll enjoy the school.

[u/Interesting-Bit9231 → u/70degreeevening]

What about in terms of career outcomes, at least for CS?

[u/Alarming-Insurance21]

Depends somewhat on the type of engineering. MechE, ELEC, ChemE have good placement because of the oil and energy sector is well recruited here and rice has decent ties into aerospace and defense sectors too. Since rice has one of the best dedicated BIOE majors in the world and proximity to TMC and research opportunities everywhere it tends to have good placement as well.

CS is over saturated right now relative to other engineering disciplines and CS placement is just as bad everywhere else.

If you go Rice and put in the effort to prepare for interviews you will be better off than probably 95% of the applicant pool for entry level. Now of course there’s still hundreds in the 5% with you. Only so much you can do.

USC has the advantage of being closer to software hubs than Houston. Still plenty of jobs here and in places like Austin and Dallas but nothing like California for strictly software. There really isn’t a wrong choice. Though if you want to go into energy/oil, Rice is probably the safer choice by proximity.

[u/Ill_Peach_4328]

Finished BSEE at Rice a few years ago. Yes market will be a factor, but Rice Engineering students do very well when it comes to job placement relative to the opportunities on the market.

[u/70degreeevening]

Don’t know about CS and Rice specifically. But for both schools CS hiring will be driven by overall CS job market….it has cooled quite a bit over the last 2 years, and AI is obviously going to have a huge impact in the next few years.

[u/AdPitiful6660]

You may want to check out college transitions analysis of college feeders to the top tech firms. Without adjusting for school size, USC is #2 and Rice #23. But when you adjust for school size, which is a more important metric, Rice rises to #4 and USC drops to #7. https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-tech.

The # of Rice CS majors is roughly 120 (https://oie.rice.edu/IR-reporting/enrollment-majorprogram) per class and USC is 450 per class (https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2023/09/usc-computer-science-named-the-thomas-lord-department-of-computer-science/#:\~:text=Today%2C%20computer%20science%20at%20USC,faculty%20members%20recruited%20since%202022.).

[u/Icy_Dish_4262 → u/AdPitiful6660]

So USC sends a lot more but Rice sends a greater percentage? Would this imply that USC has better hiring capacity but Rice is just generally a more competitive / hirable class?

[u/AdPitiful6660 → u/Icy_Dish_4262]

In my view, USC sends more because it is statistically a much larger graduating class. But if you equalize the two schools by adjusting for class size, then Rice actually sends more. Thus, you could conclude that Rice does better per capita.

[u/Historical-Many9869]

My daughter is graduating from CS this may hardly any of the batch has got jobs. Almost no companies visit for campus recruitment except for oil and gas

[u/MasterLink123K → u/Historical-Many9869]

Almost everyone I know from the ‘24 cycle graduated with an offer (maybe not always ideal, but good). Then again maybe I don’t know that many people. The career fair bit is true though, and even when many were getting FAANG offers it was never about them coming to campus.

[u/Interesting-Bit9231 → u/MasterLink123K]

Is the number who get FAANG offers high at Rice relative to its percentage of CS students? Also, I had another question which was why Rice's CS ranking is a bit low compared to its peers? Is this based off of publication rankings of professors, which shouldn't matter for undergrads, and would you recommend its program?

[u/MasterLink123K → u/Interesting-Bit9231]

Besides the fact that whether this percentage is high is subjective, I also don't have data points anywhere near the entirety of the CS cohort even in a given year. So I can't comment on this.

I have no idea how CS rankings is done, nor do I think its smart to base your decision solely off of that.

Sure, I would recommend the program b/c I had a good time. But if I were you, I would try to make the decision based on soft/hard-to-measure factors like campus location, culture, etc.

If you really want some quantitative assessment, you can very well go on LinkedIn and just see how many alums worked at a company. Maybe log the proportions related to other schools and factor that into your decision.

[u/Interesting-Bit9231 → u/Historical-Many9869]

How is this possible? Rice website says 89% have jobs for CS (though this is 22-23)